I just flew back from El Paso, and boy are my arms tired (from all the juggling of course!).

Seriously though, what an amazing festival it truly was. So many incredible performances, workshops, events, and memories. It was very gratifying to hear so many people remark about how great all the venues were, how close everything was, and how smoothly the event ran.

Special thanks to our anonymous donors iiWii and Unna Med for helping to make this festival as phenomenal as it was. Because of their generosity, this festival had the highest championships prize money in IJA history, free brunch all week for all attendees, an event DJ, onsite massages, and the most souped-up version of The Gauntlet obstacle course to date!

It’s not too early to look forward to next year’s festival! In 2017, we will be celebrating our big 70th anniversary festival in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Festival Director Dan Holzman has hit the ground running and has already shared with us some of his epic plans for this monumental event. More details coming soon!

In IJA political news, I’d like to welcome Scott Cain and Ian Michael Loughlin to the IJA Board of Directors. Both are very accomplished individuals, and it is exciting to have them lending their skills to the IJA.

The Annual General Meeting at the El Paso fest.

There are lots of great things coming up. Be on the lookout for a new IJA website, exclusive membership content, and a few other surprises in the coming months!

As always, if you have any ideas, questions, or just want to touch base, feel free to reach out and contact us anytime.

Honored to continue to serve you,

Nathan Wakefield IJA Chairman

IJA 2016 Stage Championships results

Individuals Medalists

Individuals – Gold Medal – Hiroki Kamei

Hiroki has been practicing diabolo for 15 years. Please enjoy his new diabolo tricks. He won first place in the men’s individuals category at the 2013 Tokyo International Diabolo Competition, first place for one-diabolo vertex at the 2014 All Japan Diabolo Competition, first place for one bearing diabolo at the 2015 Diabolo Asia Cup 2015, and first place for men’s individuals at the 2015 Diabolo Malaysia Open Competition.

Individuals – Silver Medal – Jorden Moir

Jorden (MOY-er) is a 28-year-old professional juggler from Ontario, Canada. He has been juggling for 15 years and juggles a wide variety of props, with a specialization in foot juggling with beanbags. His performing venues include dinner theaters, corporate events, and European variety shows. Jorden was the 2010 IJA Individual Stage Champion.

Individuals – Bronze Medal – Scott Sorensen

Scott has been a juggler for over 30 years. Juggling the most things for the longest time has always been his passion, and he has collected 16 IJA Numbers Gold Medals for doing so. Once described as a “meat and potatoes juggler” by Matt Hall, here is Scott with an act titled “a few of my favorite juggling things.”

Teams Medalists

Teams – Gold Medal – Jonglissimo

Daniel Ledel and Dominik Harant were inspired to practice juggling through a workshop at their local school. One of the juggling teachers was Manuel Mitasch. Now they perform together all over Europe. They won IJA gold medals in 2005, 2007, and 2013 and have over 15 world records. Normally, their shows are a unique mix of theater, juggling, and multimedia arts. At the IJA stage championships they will focus on the raw art of juggling by pushing their technical ability to the next level.

This diabolo performance duo is from Nagoya Japan and consists of Tetsuya Tochikubo and Ayaka Tochikubo. In 2015, Totchees won the All-Japan Diabolo Competition for teams. They have won various other prizes and championships and have performed at a lot of festivals. Most of the act is composed of original pair tricks. Totchees especially hopes you enjoy the vertical diabolo tricks. It is their dream to perform on the IJA Championships stage.

Teams – Bronze Medal – Aki and Takeru

Aki Ueno and Takeru Hirano are two devilstickers who have been trying their best at devilstick juggling for a long time. They have conceived a lot of new devilstick tricks that you have never seen and improved their technique up to this day. Their consummated devilstick juggling and combinations will make you all surprised.

Juniors Medalists

Juniors – Gold Medal – Jonah Botvinick-Greenhouse

Jonah has been juggling for six years, since he was ten, and has participated in several competitions held by the World Juggling Federation. In 2013 and 2015, he won the WJF’s advanced overall championship. Jonah has attended the past three IJA festivals, but this is his first time competing. In addition to juggling, Jonah also enjoys playing cello and ultimate Frisbee.

Juniors – Silver Medal – Christopher Haaser

Christopher, 15, began juggling in 2009. He has amazed audiences with his juggling skills in Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, and Quebec. At the age of 10, Christopher juggled seven balls and performed for Spooky Woods, a TV commercial filmed in North Carolina. He was an eight-time podium finisher at the 2014 IJA joggling competition. He currently juggles balls, rings, clubs, fire torches, knives, and much more. Other interests include chess, kendama, dominoes, kinetic contraptions, trampoline, skiing, swimming, kayaking, and more.

Photo by Emory Kimbrough

Juniors – Bronze Medal – Bennett Santora

Bennett was created by a group of mad scientists who were intent on taking over the world by installing jugglers in key leadership positions. He was designed to be witty, intelligent, and charming and to have supernatural juggling ability. He is being groomed to take over the world military industrial complex and convert all weapons production to production of juggling props. At present, he is an entertainer and sixth grader. He lives in New York City.

100 meter 3 ball Boys 12 and under Bennett Santora 20.53 #7 All time best in division 100 meter 3 ball Men’s Masters Nicolas Souren 14.97 #5 All time best in division 100 meter 3 ball Women’s Masters Heather Mariott 19.31 #3 All time best in division 100 meter 5 ball Boys 12 and under Bennett Santora 28.88 #1 All time best in division 100 meter 5 ball Men’s Masters Nicolas Souren 27.09 #3 All time best in division

400 meter 3 ball Women’s Open Gabrielle Foran 1:13.85 #1 All time best in division, NEW WORLD RECORD 400 meter 3 ball Men’s Masters Nicolas Souren 1:16.19 #10 All time best in division 400 meter 3 ball Women’s Masters Heather Mariott 1:43.12 #5 All time best in division

100 meter 7 ball Boys 12 and under Bennett Santora 3:19.44 #1 All time best in division 100 meter 7 ball Men’s Open Mike Moore 3:09.15 #9 All time best in division 100 meter 7 ball Men’s Masters Nicolas Souren 2:53.00 #2 All time best in division

400 meter 5 ball Boys 12 and under Bennett Santora 4:55.78 #3 All time best in division 400 meter 5 ball Boys 13-17 Matt Bagley 5:00.03 #6 All time best in division 400 meter 5 ball Boys 13-17 Adam Eckman 5:03.66 #7 All time best in division 400 meter 5 ball Men’s Open Mike Moore 3:31.47 #7 All time best in division 400 meter 5 ball Men’s Open Christopher Van Hoomissen 4:55.25 #9 All time best in division 400 meter 5 ball Men’s Masters Nicolas Souren 2:42.34 #2 All time best in division, #9 ALL TIME RECORD

800 meter 3 ball Boys 12 and under Bennett Santora 5:01.75 #4 All time best in division 800 meter 3 ball Women’s Open Gabrielle Foran 2:44.44 #2 All time best in division 800 meter 3 ball Women’s Masters Heather Mariott 4:02.84 #2 All time best in division

El Paso review, by Jim Ellison What follows is an unofficial review of the 2016 IJA festival, not sanctioned by the IJA, written deep inside my bunker while eating too many Cheez-Its. I don’t speak for the IJA in any official capacity. Truthfully, I can’t even spell IJA.

Marty Robbins would be proud. Down in the West Texas town of El Paso … well, he didn’t exactly sing about a juggling festival. On the other hand, no one in our group died for the love of a girl named Felina.

For the most part, the weather cooperated. I know many feared the heat, but it wasn’t that bad. And the nights were pleasant. (El Paso, it turns out, is Spanish for “They’re tearing up the roads.”) The facility had a nice- sized gym and plenty of workshop rooms. (I’m looking at you, Purdue; don’t pretend you can’t see me.)

The theater was twice as big as we needed, so seating was never a problem. A mighty Wurlitzer provided pre-show music each night. Nice touch. I said, NICE TOUCH. (Thankfully, they backed off the volume on the organ after the first night.) The sound system provided its share of glitches, but most of the performers handled it.

In addition to all the stunning juggling, I loved the pearls of wisdom imparted at the Dan Holzman panel discussions. Two that should be tattooed on every one of us: 1) If you skip a day of practice, you notice. If you skip two days, the audience notices. 2) The magic is in the eraser.

How great was it to see Hovey Burgess and Tommy Curtin? Anyone who didn’t make a point of engaging these juggling savants missed out. And special love to the gauntlet designers and builders, as well as the donors. And speaking of lovely donations, that brunch may need to be a permanent fixture. Also, a huge attaboy to Jim Maxwell, Mike Sullivan and everyone behind the scenes.

How cool was it that The Passing Zone provided “Year of the Juggler” T-shirts for everyone? Jon Wee even broke away from America’s Got Talent to hang with us. As always, those guys rock in a big, bad way.

IJA Award of Excellence and Lifetime Achievement Awards went to Spaniards El Gran Picaso and his son, Picaso Jr. (No truth to the rumors that next year’s awards will go to the Great Cezanne and Jackson Pollock III.)

We got some media attention when a CNN crew covered combat. Apparently, though, the network was unfamiliar with juggling combat, as I think I saw Wolf Blitzer in a flak jacket.

Jerry Seinfeld appeared at the theater next to where we were on Thursday night. Had our off night been Thursday, I would have been there, probably with a group of jugglers. (“What’s the deal with rola-bolas? Are they rolas? Are they bolas?”)

Most of the restaurants were on Mills Street. It was sometimes tough to get there because of all the street construction. (Talk about your Mill’s Mess.) Best food: Mac’s Place. Runner-up and Miss Congeniality: Luigi’s Pizza.

If you skipped El Paso because it was too hard to get to, I get it. But you missed out. I’ll look for you next summer in Iowa, where the rapids smell of cedar.

Never miss an opportunity to teach, by Don Lewis

The world is full of non-jugglers. I sometimes like to think of them as unawakened potential jugglers. Various situations in life bring us into contact with these people in ways that have revealed us as skilled jugglers. Perhaps you are just wearing a juggling themed T-shirt and get a comment, and so starts the conversation. New jugglers have to come from somewhere, so be prepared to follow up some of these tenuous leads.

One such opportunity occurred as I was waiting for a plane home in the airport in El Paso after the festival. I was quite early for the flight and just reading in the waiting area. A mature lady noticed that I was wearing a juggling logo on my shirt and asked about the juggling event she had seen advertised. We talked a bit about the festival, and she wished that she had been able to see some juggling. Luckily I had three bean bags in my carry-on bag and gave a quick demonstration. The lady was entranced. It was like magic to her. I’m sure no juggler would think my three ball cascade is at all magical. The flight was late so there was plenty of time for a quick lesson.

Now, all potential lessons in this type of situation start off with a statement by the pupil along the lines of “Oh, I couldn’t possibly / I’m not coordinated / I can’t do things / insert excuse here”. I tend to keep three colored balls with me for this. The first step is to simply take one ball and casually toss it back and forth from one hand to the other. “But surely you can do this with one ball?” Well, yes, they probably can, they will admit. No-one is willing to believe they’re so clumsy that one ball is beyond them. They’re even willing to show you.

“But that thing that you’re doing with three balls – that’s way to complicated for me” is the inevitable response to a success with one ball. So I juggle three balls and tell the student to just watch the red ball – it is simply going back and forth from one hand to the other. Same thing with the green ball and the yellow ball. Suddenly there is a glimmer of possibility. Perhaps it isn’t so complicated.

The next step is the two ball exchange. It is really hard for most people initially because we are used to doing things simultaneously. It is worth getting them to try though, after a quick demonstration. A lot of people will throw the first ball and just hand the second across. If they can’t break that instinct after about four tries I move right on to a two person throw and catch, with me as the second person. You just stand face to face with your hands in the same plane. I throw three balls up in a cascade pattern and all they have to do is catch. Initially I wait until they have caught one ball before throwing the next. Now they just have to throw them back in the same order which is simple for most people. It can speed up quickly to a regular juggling rhythm. This gives the student a quick success, which is important. Now they can move on to trying three themselves, and often they’ll get three or four catches on the first try.

The lady in the airport was over sixty and giddily astonished that she learned to juggle in less than 15 minutes. Jen took a quick video of the feat and shared it with her as proof for her family. I won’t be surprised if I see the lady at the next IJA festival.

Eulogy for Tony Komosinski, by Dale Peterson

I doubt that anyone who went to the Hampshire College Juggling Festival in 1987 did so with the intent of forming lifelong friendships, but that is exactly what happened. As a result of an invitation from Tony, several of us, who met him at that festival, showed up the following Thursday at the community center, where he taught a juggling class, for what would turn out to be the first meeting of the Suspended Animation Juggling Club – a club which, at its prime, would be one of the largest juggling clubs in the country.

Although membership ebbed and flowed over the years, not many of us can match the devotion of Tony, who regularly attended from that day up until the last week of his life.

Aside from the juggling, one of the benefits of attending the club was the gathering afterward at the diner, where one could count on being regaled with stories told by the master, Tony himself. His stories were the stuff of legend and I can honestly say that Tony ranked as one of the great storytellers of all time. (At this point, I can imagine Tony saying, “What do you mean ‘one of’?”) Those of us who were fortunate enough to hear these stories certainly remember the classics such as “The Electric Soda”, “The Parents’ Bed”, “The Streetlight”, and many others.

The main theme of each of these stories was that something went horribly wrong: the soda was electric; Tony thought he was walking into his room and ended up standing on his sleeping parents’ bed; when you threw a hammer at a streetlight, it would eventually come back down, and Tony dealing with the situation in a way that only Tony could. And no one could get more humor from these situations than Tony.

During that time, in an effort to quantify juggling, Dave Finnigan, of Jugglebug fame, introduced “Juggling Achievement Pins”. Each pin represented a level of juggling competence and had various tests required to earn each one. The most basic one, for example, was learning the three ball cascade and it had a pin featuring a hand holding three balls. Never ones to take such rigidity that seriously, we thought that our club should also have an achievement pin, so we conceived of a pin named in honor of our beloved president, The “Tony Komosinski Achievement Pin” . The symbol on this particular pin would be that of a hand reaching down to pick up a dropped ball.

Our commitment to that particular joke was not enough to actually have pins made, but the picture of the hand picking up the ball did find its way onto the official club banner.

It seems fitting to have tied that picture to Tony. Not only is there no better depiction of what juggling is actually about — even a non juggler knows that no matter how perfect the pattern of life may become, it sometimes falls apart — but any juggler who has ever performed knows that the proper procedure in that case is to acknowledge the drop, make a little joke, pick up the ball, and carry on. This is just how Tony lived his life.

There were many times that patterns fell apart in the life of The Toe. Some would say too many. Yet each time, he handled things with incredible humor and a great attitude and moved on.

Just over twenty five years ago, a tornado ripped the roof of his house off and left him and his family homeless. Television and newspapers were full of stories of people ruminating about how their lives were destroyed and wondering what they were going to do and how they were going to live. When a newspaper reporter approached Tony, who was standing next to his car in front of his ruined house, the first thing he said to her was, “See what happens when you wash your car?!” That was so typical. He would always find a way to introduce humor into any situation.

One time, just before he was to have an operation on the nerves in his neck, he told me that there was a chance that the procedure could leave him paralyzed from the neck down. His reply to me asking him what he would do then was, “Well, I have been working on a comedy routine that I could do in a wheelchair.” I’m not sure he wasn’t serious.

Tony was fortunate enough to get to spend time in Europe for a job he had. Others there would spend their weekends doing things that people everywhere would normally do, drinking, hanging out, relaxing, etc. But Tony would travel to a new part of the continent each week as far as time would allow. And he did not restrict his travels to touristy parts of countries either. He traveled to places ranging from the club where the Beatles first played in Hamburg to the concentration camps in Poland. Of all the times in his life, I think that time in Europe may have been among the happiest.

Even during the last conversation I had with him on Christmas Day, he was demonstrating remarkable optimism. He seemed genuinely excited to be starting a volunteer job tutoring students at the school where Adam had attended. He was talking about his plans for retirement and adjusting comfortably to his new situation. He was happier than I had heard him in quite awhile.

I am honored to have had and been a friend to Tony for nearly thirty years. I am sure that I am not the only one who is able to say that. Tony was a person who touched many lives, and one thing I hope we have all gained from that encounter was that no matter what life tosses your way, do your best to juggle it, and if the perfect pattern is not always formed, pick things up and carry on. At the very least, it may give you a good story.

Call for volunteer IJA officers

Until about September 15, the IJA Board of Directors will be accepting “Letters of Interest” (via email) from people desiring to fill one of the volunteer IJA officer positions. The positions have a variety of focuses and require a minimum of a one year commitment. Officers help to direct the activity of the organization and bring fresh and dynamic ideas to the Board regarding their particular area of focus.

Below is a list of IJA officers and a link to the web page of job descriptions. Look them over. And if you have an idea for a useful new position to add, let us know your thoughts.

The IJA Board will select the officer they think best fits each position. Whether or not you are selected as an official IJA Officer, the Board is excited to find a good fit for you as a volunteer within the organization.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Board Chair Nathan Wakefield at: wakefield@juggle.org.

Reminder: New email address for IJA Membership Director The email address for reaching our Membership Director (Marilyn Sullivan) is: ijamemberships@juggle.org. And remember, you can renew your membership online by logging in to ym.juggle.org and then going to Manage Profile.

2013 Fest DVD 2-Pack available from the IJA Store

The 2013 IJA Festival DVD 2-Pack is available for purchase, from the IJA Store. The price is $30 for members ($40 for non-members). To get the member price, sign in at ym.juggle.org. Once you are signed in, go to:

We have DVDs for sale from the IJA fests in: 2011, 2012 and 2013. Each year includes two DVDs and roughly two hours of video.

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Upcoming juggling festivals For a list of even more festivals, check the worldwide juggling event listings on our website at: www.juggle.org/events.

If you’re organizing a juggling festival (or if you simply know of a juggling fest) and you want to advertise it in the IJA eNewsletter, just drop a note to eNewsletter editor Don Lewis ijanews@juggle.org. Such listings are free.

The eNewsletter comes out near the end of each month. Your festival can be listed for a few months, and you don’t have to be an IJA affiliate to have a fest listed. Hey, jugglers want to know about juggling fests. Help them out and get more jugglers to your fest at the same time.